NEWS - Local Breaking News

U.S. Senators Johnny Isakson, and Saxby Chambliss met with FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and more than 20 bankers from across the state during a meeting in Atlanta.

Chambliss and Isakson organized the hour-long meeting to give members of Georgia’s banking community the opportunity to meet with Bair and ask questions regarding the real estate marketplace, FDIC regulatory policies and capital markets.

“We had a good dialogue for these difficult times,” Isakson said. “I appreciate Chairman Bair taking the time to meet with Georgia’s bankers so she could hear firsthand about the tough challenges they are facing.”

“Georgians have clearly felt the impact of this national economic crisis, and while we need to continue our efforts to stem the tide of this broad economic volatility, we appreciate Chairman Bair and the FDIC’s efforts to alleviate the impact on Georgia’s banks,” said Chambliss.

During the meeting, Isakson and Chambliss also expressed their concern that mark-to-market accounting rules are disproportionately penalizing the people they serve. Given the declines our nation has seen in the mortgage-backed securities and in real estate, mark-to-market has caused tremendous problems for our nation’s banks. Isakson and Chambliss believe mark-to-market rules should be replaced with a mechanism of amortization or “smoothing” to absorb the assets over time. This would allow the absorption of those assets over time to be more reflective of reality and less reflective of the dire economic straits that our nation faces today.